US Navy carrier aircraft wearing green camo in 'Nam

Arjan · Post by **Arjan** » 28 Oct 2008, 20:15

Hi all,

Pardon me if I am mistaken but when looking at a number of pictures posted on airliners.net it seems that USN aircraft flew around wearing green c/s flying over Vietnam. The pictures are posted by Del Laughery (always great pictures by the way). On them you see the USS Constellation and a number of her aircraft like Skyhawks, Intruders and Vigilantes sporting green.

I have never noticed such colours on Navy aircraft before as I can remember. Can someone give me more information about this?

Many thanks and best regards,

Arjan

ehusmann · Post by **ehusmann** » 28 Oct 2008, 20:37

During 1965 and 1966 the USN experimented with these colours to see if aircraft would be less visible against the jungle backdrop. Apparantly it wasn't very succesfull, because there was not so much opposition in the air and also the colours made the carrier ops at night difficult. The dark colours made aircraft hard to see on the decks at night.
So, the experiment didn't last long, fortunately, as it didn't look that good if you ask me....

Source: Vietnam Air War Debrief, R.F. Dorr & C. Bishop (1996)

Erwin

SquAdmin · Post by **SquAdmin** » 28 Oct 2008, 21:18

Could you post a link to the picture on airliners.net, because I'm interested but can't find it...?

Ghanz · Post by **Ghanz** » 28 Oct 2008, 23:21

If you search for Del Laughery on the site you'll find green painted skyhawks on the first image.

Greetz,

Hans

SquAdmin · Post by **SquAdmin** » 29 Oct 2008, 07:02

But if I click on your link I don't see that picture in the list.

Edit: ah, wait. I see it's in the black and white picture. I was scanning for colour pics...

Arjan · Post by **Arjan** » 29 Oct 2008, 20:34

Okay thanks Erwin. That explains a lot and certainly makes sense.

Cheers,

Arjan

nilsko · Post by **nilsko** » 30 Oct 2008, 15:15

Weren't some of the A-1 Skyraiders stationed at carriers and didn't they wore camo thorughout the conflict?

ehusmann · Post by **ehusmann** » 30 Oct 2008, 16:17

I haven´t ever seen USN or USMC Skyraiders in green. The USAF examples were green though, maybe you are mixing those up?

Erwin

nilsko · Post by **nilsko** » 30 Oct 2008, 17:01

Yes, I did

Should have done my research better. A few seconds of Googling revealed only Navy/USMC examples in grey c/s and USAF ones in green..

Francois Mathelart · Post by **Francois Mathelart** » 30 Oct 2008, 21:34

Hi,
These were temporary paint schemes tried on USS Constellation and Kitty Hawk in 1966. A-4, A-5, A-6, F-4 and even at least one A-1 (137520-507) were painted in various shades of green (34079,34102) and of tan (30219) seen on RA-5C's from RVAH-13. A picture of a KA-3B in 34079 from VAH-4 is also known. The undersides of all these aircrafts remained Insignia White. Documentation base is MIL-C-18263(Wep) of 27 december 1961.

More explanations in NAVY AIR COLORS Vol.2 by Thomas E.Doll, Berkley R. Jackson and William A.Riley, squadron Signals Pub. ISBN 0-89747-168-7.

I will try to find pictures or the BuN°s of the aircrafts concerned.

François

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